The BCP modelled its policies after those of the Soviet Union, transforming the country over the course of a decade from an agrarianpeasant society into an industrializedsocialist society. In the mid 1950s and after the death of Stalin, conservative hardliners lost influence and a period of social liberalization and stability followed under Todor Zhivkov. Varying degrees of conservative or liberal influence followed. After a new energy and transportation infrastructure was constructed, by 1960 manufacturing became the dominant sector of the economy and Bulgaria became a major exporter of household goods and later on computer technologies, earning it the nickname of "Silicon Valley of the Eastern Bloc". The country's relatively high productivity levels and high scores on social development rankings made it a model for other socialist countries' administrative policies.

History

On 1 March 1941, Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact, and officially became a member of the Axis Powers. As a result of the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece in April, Bulgaria came to occupy large parts of these countries. In 1942, the Fatherland Front was formed from a mixture of Communists, Socialists and Liberals.

Communist coup

In 1944, with the entry of the Red Army in Romania, the Kingdom of Bulgaria changed its alliance and declared neutrality. On 5 September, the Soviet Union declared war on the kingdom and three days later the Red Army entered north-eastern Bulgaria, prompting the government to declare support in order to minimise military conflict. On 9 September, communist partisans launched a coup d'état which de facto ended the rule of the Bulgarian monarchy and its administration, after which a new government assumed power led by the Fatherland Front (FF), which itself was led by the Bulgarian Communist Party.

Early years and Chervenkov era

Georgi Dimitrov, General Secretary of the Bulgarian Communist Party from 1946–1949

After taking power, the FF formed a coalition under the former ruler Kimon Georgiev, including the Social Democrats and the Agrarians. Under the terms of the peace settlement, Bulgaria was allowed to keep Southern Dobruja, but formally renounced all claims to Greek and Yugoslav territory. 150,000 Bulgarians settled during the occupation were expelled from Western Thrace. The Communists deliberately took a minor role in the new government at first, while the Soviet representatives held the real power. A Communist-controlled People's Militia was set up, which harassed and intimidated non-Communist parties.

On 1 February 1945, RegentPrince Kiril, former Prime Minister Bogdan Filov, and hundreds of other officials of the old regime were arrested on charges of war crimes. By June, Kirill and the other Regents, twenty-two former ministers, and many others had been executed. The new government began to arrest Nazi collaborators. As the war came to a halt, the government expanded its campaign of political revolution to attack economic elites in banking and private business. This strengthened when it became apparent that the United States and United Kingdom had little interest in Bulgaria. In November 1945, Communist Party leader Georgi Dimitrov returned to Bulgaria after 22 years in exile. He made a truculent speech that rejected cooperation with opposition groups. Elections held a few weeks later resulted in a large majority for the Fatherland Front.

The Agrarians refused to co-operate with the new regime, and in June 1947 their leader Nikola Petkov was arrested. Despite strong international protests he was executed in September. This marked the establishment of a Communist regime in Bulgaria. In December 1947, the constituent assembly ratified a new constitution for the republic, referred to as the "Dimitrov Constitution". The constitution was drafted with the help of Soviet jurists using the 1936 Soviet Constitution as a model. By 1948, the remaining opposition parties were either realigned or dissolved; the Social Democrats merged with the Communists, while the Agrarian Union became a loyal partner of the Communists.

Dimitrov died in 1949 and for a time Bulgaria adopted collective leadership. Vulko Chervenkov led the Communist Party and Vasil Kolarov was prime minister. This broke down a year later, when Kolarov died and Chervenkov added prime minister to his titles. Chervenkov started a process of rapid industrialization modelled after the Soviet industrialisation led by Stalin in the 1930s. Agriculture was collectivised by mandate and refusal to comply was punishable by imprisonment. Labor camps were set up and at the height of the campaign housed about 100,000 people. Thousands of people were charged with treason or participating in counter-revolutionary conspiracy and sentenced to either death or life in prison.[2][3][4]

Chervenkov's support base even in the Communist Party was too narrow for him to survive long once his patron Stalin was gone. In March 1954, a year after Stalin's death, Chervenkov was deposed as Party Secretary with the approval of the new leadership in Moscow and replaced by Todor Zhivkov. Chervenkov stayed on as Prime Minister until April 1956, when he was finally dismissed and replaced by Anton Yugov.

The highest estimate for the number of partisans at any one time in Bulgaria is 18,000.[5]

Forced Macedonization in Pirin Macedonia

Cultural autonomy must be granted to Pirin Macedonia within the framework of Bulgaria. Tito has shown himself more flexible than you - possibly because he lives in a multiethnic state and has had to give equal rights to the various peoples. Autonomy will be the first step towards the unification of Macedonia, but in view of the present situation there should be no hurry on this matter. Otherwise, in the eyes of the Macedonian people the whole mission of achieving Macedonian autonomy will remain with Tito and you will get the criticism. You seem to be afraid of Kimon Georgiev, you have involved yourselves too much with him and do not want to give autonomy to Pirin Macedonia. That a Macedonian consciousness has not yet developed among the population is of no account. No such consciousness existed in Byelorussia either when we proclaimed it a Soviet Republic. However, later it was shown that a Byelorussian people did in fact exist[6]

The government used force, threats and intimidation, branding opponents of the policy as fascists and chauvinists. Some were resettled as far as Vojvodina after they had been resettled from Pirin to SR Macedonia for unsuccessful Macedonisation.

Bulgaria adopted the Communist policy of closer rapprochement with Yugoslavia. Then Dimitrov, initiated the idea of a Balkan Federation that would range from Pirin to the Shar Mountains and reflect a Macedonian consciousness. For this purpose, he launched a policy of forced Macedonisation of the Bulgarian population in the Pirin region through conscious change of ethnic self-determination, held by means of administrative coercion and intensive propaganda.

In December 1946, he conducted a census in Pirin. State authorities instructed the local population in the Pirin region to mark administrative records such as "Macedonian", including Pomaks, with the exception of those originating within the country. At its meeting on December 21, the Regional Committee of the Workers' Party in Upper Cuma decided to accept a formula indicating 70% of residents were "Macedonians". As a result, among the 281,015 inhabitants, 169,444 were identified as ethnic Macedonians.

In 1947 Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed agreements whereby Pirin Macedonia became part of federal Yugoslavia, which proceeded to unify Pirin Macedonia with Vardar Macedonia and abolished visa regimes and removed customs services.

Shortly thereafter - in 1948, due to the rupture in relations between Tito and Stalin, the contract was dissolved. For a while BCP and the Bulgarian state held contradictory, protivobalgarska policy on the Macedonian issue. In 1963 at the March Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Zhivkov declared that the population in Pirin Macedonia was part of Bulgaria that was forced by the Communist Party.

"The friendship between the Soviet and the Bulgarian people — indestructible for eternity", a 1969 Soviet stamp commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Socialist Revolution in Bulgaria

The headquarters of the Bulgarian Communist party in 1984

Zhivkov became the leader of the BCP and remained for the following 33 years. The BCP retained its alliance with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), then led by Nikita Khrushchev. With conservative hardliners pushed aside, this brought in a period of liberal influence and reform. Relations were restored with Yugoslavia, which had previously been shunned by the Soviet Union due to its anti-Stalinist stance, and Greece. The trials and executions of Traicho Kostov and other "Titoists" (though not of Nikola Petkov and other non-Communist victims of the 1947 purges) were officially denounced. The party's militant anti-clericalism was relaxed and the Orthodox Church was no longer targeted.

Upheavals in Poland and Hungary in 1956 did not spread to Bulgaria. The Party placed firm restrictions on publicising views considered to be anti-socialist or seditious. In the 1960s some economic reforms were adopted, which allowed the free sale of production that exceeded planned amounts. The country became the most popular tourist destination for people in the Eastern Bloc. Bulgaria produced commodities such as cigarettes and chocolate, which were hard to obtain in other socialist countries.

Yugov retired in 1962, and Zhivkov consequently became Prime Minister as well as Party Secretary. He survived the Soviet leadership transition from Khrushchev to Brezhnev in 1964.

In 1960, when Bulgaria could not pay its debts of $97 million to Western banks, Zhivkov personally addressed a written proposal to Khrushchev asking the USSR to purchase reserves gained over 66 years - from liberation in 1878 to 1944, including 22 tons of gold and 50 tons of silver.

The gold was taken to Novosibirsk, where it was further refined and purchased for $35.10 per ounce, a total of 23 million dollars. In 2009, the value of that gold would be $639 million. In subsequent years Zhivkov conducted several secret operations with gold. Between 1960 and 1964 he sold 31.8 tons, using the proceeds to repay Bulgaria's debts mainly to Soviet banks.

On 4 December 1963, Zhivkov proposed closer approximation and future merger of Bulgaria and the Soviet Union at the Central Committee plenum. This would make it the 16th Republic of the Soviet Union. The plenum unanimously approved Zhivkov's proposal.

In 1968 Zhivkov again demonstrated his loyalty to the Soviet Union by taking a formal part in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. His troops entered the country but did not take an active part in crushing the Prague Spring. At this point Bulgaria became generally regarded as the Soviet Union's most loyal Eastern European ally.

The operation involved the 12th and 22nd Infantry Regiments numbering 2,164 people and a T-34 tank battalion with 26 machines.

Declassified documents of the Communist Bulgaria revealed a plan to foment crisis between Turkey and Greece in 1971. The operation codenamed "Cross" and the plan was that Bulgarian secret agents would set fire on the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and make it look like the work of Turks. The declassified documents state that “An intervention” in the religious entity would have “significantly damage[d] Turkish-Greek relations and force[d] the United States to choose one side in the ensuing crisis,”. In addition, the Bulgarians also planned to boost the effect of its operation against Greece and Turkey by conducting “active measures" “for putting the enemy in a position of delusion." The plan was developed by the 7th Department of the First Main Directorate of the DS (intelligence and secret police services of communist Bulgaria), and was affirmed by Deputy Head of the Directorate on November 16, 1970, and approved by its Head. The operation was supposed to be prepared by the middle of 1971 and then executed, but it was abandoned.[7]

In 1971 the new "Zhivkovskata" Constitution added so-called. "Article 1", which grants the PA as the sole ruling a "leading force of society and the state." Zhivkov was promoted to Head of State (Chairman of the State Council) and Stanko Todorov became Prime Minister.

Bulgaria signed the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which guaranteed human rights and fundamental freedoms, including freedom of movement, contacts, information, culture and education, right to work, and the rights to education and medical care. However, subsequent events regarding Bulgarian Turks in the 1980s were a direct violation of these commitments.

In 1978, Bulgaria attracted international attention when dissident writer Georgi Markov was accosted on a London street by a stranger who rammed his leg with the tip of an umbrella. Markov died shortly afterwards of ricin poisoning. He was the victim of the Bulgarian secret service, as confirmed by KGB documents revealing that they had jointly planned the operation with Bulgaria.

End of the People's Republic

By the 1980s, the conservatives controlled the government. Some social and cultural liberalization and progress was led by Lyudmila Zhivkova, Todor's daughter, who became a source of strong disapproval and annoyance to the Communist Party due to her unorthodox lifestyle that included the practicing of Eastern religions. She died in 1981, approaching her 39th birthday.

A campaign of forced assimilation against the ethnic Turkish minority, who were forbidden to speak the Turkish language[9] and were forced to adopt Bulgarian names took place in the winter of 1984. The issue strained Bulgaria's economic relations with the West. The 1989 expulsion of Turks from Bulgaria caused a significant drop in agricultural production in the southern regions due to the loss of around 300,000 workers.[10]

Todor Zhivkov

In the late 1980s, the Communists, like their leader, had grown too feeble to resist the demand for change. Liberal outcry at the breakup of an environmental demonstration in Sofia in October 1989 broadened into a general campaign for political reform. More moderate elements in the Communist leadership reacted by deposing Zhivkov and replacing him with foreign minister Petar Mladenov on November 10, 1989.

This move gained a short respite for the Communist Party and prevented revolutionary change. Mladenov promised to open up the regime, stating that he supported multi-party elections. Demonstrations throughout the country led Mladenov to announce that the Communist Party would cede its monopoly over the political system. On January 15, 1990, the National Assembly formally amended the legal code to abolish the Communist Party's "leading role". In June 1990, the first multi-party elections since 1939 were held. Finally on 15 November 1990, the 7th Grand National Assembly voted to change the country's name to the Republic of Bulgaria and removed the Communist state emblem from the national flag.[11]

It is estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed in Bulgaria beginning in 1944 as part of agricultural collectivisation and political repression, although documentation is insufficient for a definitive judgement. According to one source, some 31,000 people were reported killed under the regime between 1944 and 1989.[2][12] Figures for fatalities in forced labour camps also remain elusive.[13]

A 2009 poll conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found that one-in-nine Bulgarians believe ordinary people are better off as a result of the transition to capitalism. Sixteen percent say the multi-party republic is run for the benefit of all people.[14]